Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) units represent one example of standardized hot-pluggable transceiving units. SFP units are standardized units adapted to be inserted within a chassis. A suite of specifications, produced by the SFF (Small Form Factor) Committee, describe the size of the SFP unit, so as to ensure that all SFP compliant units may be inserted smoothly within one same chassis, i.e. inside cages, ganged cages, superposed cages and belly-to-belly cages. Specifications for SFP units are available at http://www.sffcommittee.com/ie/index.html.
SFP units may be used with various types of exterior connectors, such as coaxial connectors, optical connectors, RJ45 connectors and various other types of electrical connectors. In general, an SFP unit allows connection between an external apparatus, via a front connector of one of the aforementioned types, and internal components of a hosting unit, for example a motherboard, a card or a backplane leading to further components, via a back interface of the SFP unit. Specification no INF-8074i Rev 1.0, entitled “SFP (Small Form-factor Pluggable) Transceiver, dated May 12, 2001, available at ftp://ftp.seagate.com/sff/INF-8074.PDF, generally describes sizes, mechanical interfaces, electrical interfaces and identification of SFP units.
The SFF Committee also produced specification no SFF-8431 Rev. 4.1, “Enhanced Small Form-factor Pluggable Module SFP+”, dated Jul. 6, 2010. This document, which reflects an evolution of the INF-8074i specification, defines, inter alia, high speed electrical interface specifications for 10 Gigabit per second SFP+ modules and hosts, and testing procedures. The term “SFP+” designates an evolution of SFP specifications.
INF-8074i and SFF-8431 do not generally address internal features and functions of SFP devices. In terms of internal features, they simply define identification information to describe SFP devices' capabilities, supported interfaces, manufacturer, and the like. As a result, conventional SFP devices merely provide connection means between external apparatuses and components of a hosting unit, the hosting unit in turn exchanging signals with external apparatuses via SFP devices.
Recently, SFP units with internal features and functions providing signal processing capabilities have appeared. For instance, some SFP units now include signal re-clocking, signal reshaping or reconditioning, signals combination or separation, etc.
In the field of video transport, advances have been made recently for transporting the payload of a video signal into Internet Protocol (IP) packets (e.g. Serial Digital Interface (SDI) video payload encapsulated into IP packets). A SFP unit can be adapted to receive the IP flow transporting the video payload, and to transmit this IP flow to a hosting unit into which the SFP unit is currently inserted. The IP flow transporting the video payload is generally referred to as the data plane. Control plane messages are exchanged between various entities (e.g. servers, routers, switches, gateways, etc.) for controlling characteristics of the IP flow. Upon reception of such a control plane message, one of these entities is capable of modifying characteristics of the IP flow, in conformance with the received control plane message. However, SFP units currently lack this type of capability.
Therefore, there is a need for a new standardized hot-pluggable transceiving unit with control plane management capabilities.